Ashes and Dust of the Past

Barre, Vermont is one of those forgettable places along Highway 89, Vietnam Veteran’s Highway that goes through the heart of Berlin, before fanning out east on State Road 302.  This is the heart of Vermont as far as the travel brochures and the Chambers of Commerce are concerned as the rugged landscape of hills of granite and gnarled pines fill the panorama as far as the eye can see.  Vermont is almost like an afterthought, tucked away in a cozy corner of New England, west of New Hampshire, north of Massechuettes and east of New York State with Canada to the north.  Montreal is only about a three hour drive on Highway 89 to the junction to Canadian highway 10 which for a lot of the folks is a day’s shopping excursion to a city that is more European than American.  

The first time I came out to Barre was with my dad when Catfish Hunter had just signed for a million dollars with the New York Yankees after four sensational seasons with the Oakland A’s.  I was only fifteen and dreaming of one day being just as famous as this North Carolina ace.  Dad took me to a place where our family roots went deep, very deep.  

My dad’s father, Ralph grew up around Barre before going off to serve in World War I and when he came home, Vermont just did not seem the same safe place it had when he was growing up.  He was itching to put his roots down somewhere else besides this idyllic family farm in the middle of nowhere.  Traveling west, he wound up in Cortland, New York where he married his sweetheart and had five kids of his own including my father.

The family tradition we share is that fathers and sons do not get along and often in the struggle of identity will find a separation is a suitable path.  Whereas the old saying of the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does not really fit in our family tradition.  My father told him that after serving in Korea, he wanted to go to Syracuse University to which Ralph’s reaction was to knock him to the floor with one punch.  Ralph was a teamster who drove rigs before power steering was invented and his chest was the size of the state and his arm strength was one of family legend.  Paul Bynan would most likely have a tough time in an arm wrestling match with Ralph.  

I kick over a blackened plank.  The fire came quick and with this old dried out wood fueling the blaze there was  very little the Barre Volunteer Fire Department could do to save the barn and chicken coup.  Now one would fear that this would mean a lot of livestock would be barbequed in the flagellation, but since Robert died five years before the fire, all of his livestock was sold off to an industrial farm just up the road where on a clear day with the wind blowing just right, you can smell the waste lake.  It makes it hard to breathe at times which is a shame since the view is awe inspiring.  Robert, Ralph’s younger brother and no relation (that we know about) to the famous Poet of the same name that wrote about Vermont in his rustic poetry, manned the farm up until his passing.

In the year dad and I visited, we met Robert and slept in a bed with big old down feather blankets with four posts.  There was a basin on the bureau, but that was for show since the place now had actual running water.  He would go out into the barn at four in the morning to milk the cows and then off to the coup to grab a few dozen eggs.  His wife Matilda would have a seven course breakfast set on the family table by the time he came back in at about five thirty.  Before his arrival, she came up and woke me and my dad.  The sun was not even up yet.  What the heck, but when I came down to the kitchen, no buffet, no breakfast place I have feasted at have yet to match the feast she had set out.  Everything breakfast you could think of was on the table.  

Over here was the pond.  Before the barn burned to the ground, there was a pond where the cows would be set to pasture and have access to water.  In the middle of the pond was a raft.  I was a swimmer thanks to my other grandpa back in New York and so when the afternoon sun began to bake, I got on my suit and played on the raft for the whole afternoon.  My splashing did not bother the cows all of who were lying in the shade of the oak and maple trees all around the farm.  The folks from land management had drained the pond and after a year of not having water, the mud had dried up to hard crusty soil.  I walked out to where the raft had been, there was a slight depression where the pond would be at its deepest and there had once been a drain to help filter the water and keep the algae from taking over and making it undrinkable. 

“Hey there.” Uncle Calvin rode up in his Ford truck.  He was the oldest of the kids from Robert and Mathilda and had retired from the granite quarry where he spent most of his working life hauling slabs of granite that helped build the White House way back when.  When dad and I had visited, I played baseball in a field of dreams just outside of the town limits.  Game started at sunup and was called about fourteen hours later on account of darkness.  They were Red Soxs fans while I was still a Yankee fan (that would change in the near future), but since the Syracuse Chiefs were the Yankee farm club, I had seen most of the team play when they were in Syracuse in the minor leagues.  

“Uncle Calvin.” You don’t waste a lot of words if you’re from Vermont.

“Sorry this is all that’s left.” He had come to haul off some of the scraps still left to the dump.  He was appointed executor of the estate after his folks passed. 

“I know.  I remember this place so well.” I put my hand on the fender of his truck.

“You know that was over forty years ago.” He put in some of the discarded wood from the farm house.  Five years after his mother passed, the roof finally gave in after providing shelter for over one hundred years. 

“Was a beautiful place.” I sighed.

“County wanted to see if it could be declared a historical building, but once the roof caved in, they figured it wouldn’t be worth the expense.” He laughed, “We ain’t exactly a rich township.”

“Yeah.” I bowed my head.

“Sorry to hear about your dad.” He closed the tailgate.  There was still plenty more, but this was a process.  

“Yeah, it was kind of sudden.” I nodded.  It had been over twenty years since my dad passed away just before turning fifty years old from congenital heart failure, but his memory was still very vivid in my head.

“He loved it here, you know.  He planned on coming back.” Calvin leaned against his truck next to me.

“I wish he had.” I coughed to clear my throat which had become clouded with emotion.  

“Ralph forbid it.” Calvin explained.

“I never understood that.” I sniffed grateful that the wind was not blowing in a certain direction, the air was crystal clear and as clean as laundry hanging on the line. 

“It was complicated.  Family stuff that doesn’t get resolved until the parties are deceased. My dad, Robert never wanted to talk about it.  I would ask him, but he’d always change the subject.  When he passed, I found some letters Ralphhad written him when he was in France during the war.  He talked about some of the horrible things he had seen and when he came home, his dad wanted him to slaughter three pigs.  He got the first one, but it screamed so bad that he started having flashbacks.  That’s what they called them then.  He handed his father the knife and said he couldn’t do it.  His father called him a coward and that did it.  He had served in France and watched his buddies get butchered in combat and his own father called him a coward.  I never understood how that could have happened.  They both loved each other.  When my father took the farm, he wrote Ralph to come back home and help with the farm, but by then he was married with kids of his own and doing something that suited him a lot better than slaughtering pigs.”

“I never knew that.” I shook my head.

“Well you father had a falling out with Ralph after he got back from serving in Korea, didn’t he?” Calvin moved his baseball cap further back on his head, it was a Red Sox cap.  

“I never quite got the whole story on that.” I admitted, “Dad was gone before he told a lot of the stories he promised to tell me.  That was one of them.” 

“I heard your father was in love with this woman who was attending Syracuse University.  She was a debutant and everything Ralph despised.  Her father was a rich lawyer and was personal friends with the mayor.  Ralph was a blue collar and your father wanted to be a white collar.” Uncle Calvin had it right.

“Yeah and he graduated valedictorian of his class at Syracuse University.  And he married that girl and you call her mom.” He laughed.

“Not any more.” I stuck my hands in my pockets.

“Yeah, I heard that one, too.” He shook his head.

“Seems like there is always some kind of tragedy following us.” I sighed and plopped against his truck again. 

“She was young, she was pretty, she was rich, she was smart and a college graduate at the time women did not go to college.” Calvin slapped me on the shoulder.

“But she had her own demons.” I squinted at him.

“We all have our own demons.  It was good seeing you.  Don’t make it so long next time.” Calvin laughed as he got into his truck.

“Where are the boys by the way and Allison?” I asked as he started up the truck.

“You know Allison, with a heart as big as Vermont, she is a director of a home for troubled teens up in Montreal.  Me and you Aunt Alice go up there about once a month to have dinner with her and sometimes her staff.   The boys are boys.  Both of them work on some of those industrial farms I hate so much.  When I was growing up, all this land belonged to families like ours and we fed a lot of folks from New England.  We used to run maple syrup on some of the trees. All of that is gone.  There isn’t but a couple of family farms left.” He put the truck into gear.  “Tell ya what, before you leave town, why don’t we take you out to dinner.  We have a nice family restaurant down on the main drag.”

“Sounds wonderful.” I began to wave as he drove out of the driveway, “I’ll text ya.”

“Oh we don’t text.  We still have a landline, you’d better call, hear?” In a cloud of dust he drove down the long driveway from the farm.  

There was a late afternoon wind that blew through the trees, blowing up some of the ashes and dust of the past.  The stillness seemed to echo some of the things that remained long after the fire burned the barn down and then the chicken coup and finally the farm house where the roof had fallen in a few places.  The volunteers did not do much than throw water on the flames, but the flames would not be beaten that day.  So much of the memory went up in ashes and dust, but so much of it still remains in a safe place within my heart.  

My mother passed away at that famous age of recent rock stars, twenty seven after a long bout with port-mortem depression, something that was not even diagnosed at the time.  Her father passed away a year after her wedding, leaving her mother in poverty, because he died a year short of the maturity of his pension.  My father went to court to get as much financial aid as he could for her, but it wasn’t much.  Her cousin would die of cancer at age twenty five and Suzie was her closest friend.  Then I came along and she was alone with a baby she had no idea what to do with.  One night she took her antidepressants with some alcohol and I was then three and could not understand why her eyes were open, but she did not want to play with me.  

So many memories hover in the late summer air.  Voices of a game of baseball that would never end.  The breakfast is set on a table as a feast for a king.  The pond with a raft tethered to the muddy bottom near the drain.  The porch where my family history came to life.  Names of those still here and those long gone.  

Up on a ridge, I look down on the remains of the Frost family farm and what little remains. Slowly I walk back to my rent-a-car, but I’m in no hurry.  I want the ashes and dust to collect on my REI hiking boots and take one last look at a place that was so central to my existence and those who are the foundation of who I am.

I’ve been married thrice.  I served for almost fourteen years in the United States Air Force and spent a year in Korea just like my dad did when he was even younger than I was.  I lived as a hermit in the Sequoias of California.  I’ve got married and had a son and then went to China to adopt my daughter.  I am not the same person who first came here when Catfish Hunter signed the first million dollar baseball contract or when Jim Rice and Fred Lynn were rookie outfielders with the Red Soxs. Or when the game was on the line in the bottom of the forty third inning and I set a line drive screaming over the fence. Before disco and Grunge.  

I can hear Uncle Robert at breakfast talk about the Hippie Commune that moved into the farm next to his.  He thinks them hippies are alright even though his wife giggles to herself thinking about that free love part.  After all it had only been about three years since that farm near one of my uncles homes in Cortland County New York had this little music festival they called Woodstock in the Summer of Love.  Robert’s nephew Hamilton Hanson is joining us for one of the breakfasts.  He is over forty and single, just like Uncle Charlie from Montpielier who has a roomful of bowling trophies.  While his sister Aunt Matilda would like to fix Hamilton with a nice young lady, he does not seem too interested in that.  Later we will go to a chicken barbeque at the Methodist Church in town and the stories told as the charcoal sends clouds of smoke into the air are told with such energy that you can’t help being drawn up into them.  People you have never met or heard of suddenly appear as ghosts around the pit where chickens are being cooked up next to a big pot of beans and corn on the cob.  

Sure is a lot to pack on my trip back home, but I don’t want to leave any of it behind in the ashes and dust, discarded and forgotten.  I have dinner with Uncle Calvin and luckily Allison has come into town from Montreal where she talks about some of the things her center is going through and I tell her about some of the things I am dealing with. Don’t ask me what we had for dinner, because that wasn’t what I will take away with me on my trip back home.  

I will go home through a fairy ride across Lake Champlain.  It takes over two hours, but it’s worth every minute.  My dad and I came this way on our trip the first time and it makes sense to go back the same way.  Call it tradition, like Tevia.  The sun glistens off the water leaving little golden slivers in its wake as the sound of the motor keeps a steady rhythm like a heartbeat, thump, thump, thump.  And while I have made this journey on my own, I do not feel alone as I stand on the deck of the boat.  

In the dust and ashes we find the memories we have long discarded, the remnants of the past, moments when the course of the future hung in a single word or action, when our time seemed like an endless road diverging into a yellow wood.